A public meeting of republicans to discuss policing was held in west
Belfast on Monday night, with sharply contrasting views put forward.

Around 200 people packed one of the large meeting rooms at the Conway
Mill building.

Willie Gallagher of the Irish Republican Socialist Party joined Mr
Mackey of the 32 County Sovereignty Committee and Sinn Féin’s Declan
Kearney on the platform for the debate.

Both Mr Gallagher and Mr Mackey indicated that their groups would not
support the PSNI police in the Six Counties until Britain ends the
partition of Ireland.

“For republicans the PSNI can never be accepted as an acceptable police
service because they are an instrument of the British government,” Mr
Gallagher said.

He said while republicans have traditionally accepted the use of the
police “in issues of ordinary crime” [such as rape], “republicans
cannot solve the corrupt policing system by becoming police within the
corrupt system and cannot bow to the pressure of making hasty
decisions”.

Mr Kearney insisted that Sinn Féin had signed up to nothing and are
still “in a process of negotiation”.

“We have identified policing as a site of struggle and our focus has
been through negotiations to ensure that the issue of policing is
centre stage,” he said.

“Sinn Féin is determined to end political policing in this state.

“We haven’t endorsed the PSNI. Sinn Féin’s position on policing is very
clear. We have a negotiation underway when that the negotiation is
concluded the debate with out party will commence.”

He added that there was no guarantee that the negotiations would prove
successful.

However, Mr Mackey questioned the decision to involve the republican
movement in any process which was in essence created and controlled by
the British government.

He said “the spectacle of republicans donning the uniform of once
legitimate targets” blinds some to the reality of what that represents.

“Part of the normalising policy is the normalising of the British
government’s illegal claim [to rule in Ireland].”